


Parting, Then Back Together

by Spiria



Category: The Last Story
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiria/pseuds/Spiria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parting isn't so sweet or sorrowful, really. Just hellish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parting, Then Back Together

His first love was like any other first love: a fine lady with long, wavy hair and a smile her lover thought brighter than the sun. She was a woman who would rouse him from sleep with the softest call of his name, who would laugh tenderly at his odd humor, and who would ultimately give him her love, as he his. Theirs was a relationship of commitment, in spite of his noncommittal fancies, with either half ever eager to return should they ever part.

They parted for simple things, like tending to their individual work and meeting with their other friends. He was more sociable than she, and she fancied cooking in the welcoming silence. She baked, she grilled, she made all of his meals save the special occasions he would do her the favor with a little less maidenly expertise.

They parted for the last time when bandits attacked. He bid her to run: "Everything will be all right. It'll be fine. Go!" His voice low and the screams outside high, with a frightened look of desperation, she held his face, afraid to yield, before she tore away through the back door.

He was no fighter, but his will propelled him forward and he confronted the first bandit to cross his path. Blind with adrenaline and his heart pounding, he was eventually overwhelmed by their increasing numbers. One of them struck him on the head from behind whilst he wrestled with another—and with a dull clang, he fell limp.

When he woke, he blinked and experienced difficulty recognizing his surroundings. A shout cleared his foggy consciousness, and several pairs of hands wrapping around his shoulders alerted him to a throbbing sensation.

Groaning, he looked down at the beam of the roof pinning him to the ground. The counter connected to the wall had caught it mid-fall and spared him the worst; yet he knew from the hot numbness that he must have hurt something.

With a powerful pull, the villagers dragged him out from under the collapsed roof. He dimly realized that the house they'd shared was now no more than burnt wood before he snapped to awareness and clung to the closest pair of arms—one of the village handyman—and stumbled over his words, his voice hoarse and weak from the smoke of the extinguished fire.

"Where is she? Tell me she's all right. Haven't you found her?" he pleaded.

The handyman glanced sympathetically at him, then shook his head. They had found her.

"Take me to her. Where is she?"

He tried to stand, but his legs were weak and he swooned, and would have fallen if not for his impeccable reflex to steady himself. Unmoving, he demanded and was brought to his woman, who lay among the dead.

The villagers had not defiled her any more than she had endured before her death, pitying the fate of one of their young maidens. Her hair had been pulled, clumps missing where blotches of dried blood rested, and her face held stark signs of a beating. Her throat was slit. The ends of her dress were folded down, but the tears told what the tattered fabric hid.

Lowell held her corpse and cried.

* * *

His second love was more tender, coupled with his protectiveness and her delicate health. He had met her after relocating, his village scattered, and she had taken to him almost immediately. His inner misery fueled her maternal instincts, and she comforted him. Eventually, she rekindled his love and they started something anew.

Her constant ailments gave him an excuse to stay beside her without respite, fearing the misfortune of another parting. She recognized his need in her hazy fever and held his hand through the hours even as she slept. He pet her hair all night, watching gravely, yet with a modicum of hope. Those afflicted once grew stronger after recovery, and he prayed she would come out of each illness stronger; healthier.

She did, until the day after her long fought recovery the village plague struck her down.

They had been laughing, her wrapped in his arms, when shed bent her head and suddenly coughed. Then she'd looked up with an abject look of horror, blood on the corner of her lips.

Lowell was wrestled away from her contagious body until after the mass cremation—and by then, he could not tell which ashes were whose.

* * *

His third, fourth, and fifth loves all ended when he was almost at his happiest.

* * *

His last love was different from all he'd known. Its name was Syrenne, synonymous to She-Brute.

Lowell was fond of the She-Brute, for she was both beautiful and strong, and not nearly ugly as he joked her to be. Truth be told, her feminine appearance betraying her actual personality had taken him by surprise. His heart had skipped a beat, even if he hadn't shown it. Then he'd known at that first glance that he would much rather tease than flirt with her.

So he did; spitting on the wise words of his dead father, his dead grandfather, and his (probably) living former neighbor.

It was a marvelous experience and every bit worth it, until the moment she would throw him over something. It was all in jest, the others would assure him, but he oft felt the crick in his neck for days on end. Jest, sure; her idea of what men would call a light pound against the shoulder was utterly painful, and most would flee at the recoil of her fist, poised to strike.

Lowell never did, and while he suffered, he thought it all funny, in a way. Perhaps she thought the same to keep walking into the butt of his jokes. She never took them with her usual smile, the kind of open smile a proper lady would never do, however, and her features had a tendency to contort in an ugly fashion whenever he opened his mouth.

Regardless of their banters, Syrenne never abandoned those in need. She never ran, as far as he knew, and her recklessness had his adrenaline coursing when they teamed. In the end of their marginally comfortable days, she was the one who carried him, his arm around her shoulders, and who held him protectively; yet without the expected tenderness of woman, for she was thin but had definition; and her skin, rather coarse with years of fighting, was neither milky smooth nor soft.

Lowell found the touch comforting either way and leaned against her powerful frame as cries faded behind them, the rain pelting on their misery.

For his outward confidence about his way with the ladies, he was uncertain when he came to love her.

When the thought came to him one night, terrifying him out of once welcome drowsiness, he convinced himself that he was being delusional; that he should cease such madness before he killed her like the rest.

Sleep came fleetingly and poorly to the morning, and he belted out more teasing than his norm.

He soon grew accustomed to Syrenne's ire, as she his japes, and they fell to a more comfortable routine of (mostly) harmless banters. They hadn't known each other too long, but it was a great deal of time for Lowell, who never seemed able to hold onto a woman.

While Syrenne was in fact a woman, her manly qualities deceptively hid her unusual high maintenance. She spent just as much, if not more, than her same gender peers on everything none of those same peers would consider placing their gold. Somewhere along the way she had decided it sound to leech money from him; and who was he to deny her? Though when his pocket change began to suffer, like the rest of him, he reconsidered.

Syrenne was much more work than any thing or one he had ever had the odd pleasure of meeting, and beneath the sighs and exasperation, he loved the thrill she brought—the thrill she was.

* * *

Lowell loved her.

So he took his damned hell for her.

* * *

He woke, cricks all over his body, and held Syrenne close. He rejoiced.

She had lived.

* * *

They chose to help out at Ariela's tavern, because he knew to run their own bar meant draining his wallet while hers depleted even faster than his. Then there would have been no beer, no winnings at the arena, and she would have drunk his blood in an ironically drunken rage if she didn't just throw him down the stairs and used his body as a doormat.

Lowell was a little luckier at the tavern.


End file.
